


What You Believe

by capgal



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Mild descriptions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 10:18:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5739934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capgal/pseuds/capgal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maybe it really has been three weeks. Or maybe it’s only been two days, or two whole months. It doesn’t really matter; he’s not going to believe them. If he believes them about this, then he has no defense against everything else they tell him. Besides, Steve found him last time, and he didn’t even know Bucky was missing back then. Steve saw him disappear this time. He has to be on his way.</p><p>Steve is coming. Steve is coming. <em>Steve is coming</em>. He just needs to hold on until then.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What You Believe

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ftmsteverogers (wistful_joy)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=ftmsteverogers+%28wistful_joy%29).



> Orion, I still blame you for this fic, and I'm sorry it took me almost two months. 
> 
> Re: the violence tag, there is one sentence about halfway through the fic that briefly runs down the kinds of torture HYDRA inflicts on Bucky. Nothing graphic, but figured it'd be better safe than sorry.

They tell him it’s been three weeks.

He’s got no way to prove them wrong, but he refuses to believe them on principle. Granted, he’s lost too many chunks that could have been a minute or a day to really keep track of time properly. All he knows for sure is that it’s been long enough that the hours are starting to bleed together in one endless track of darkness-pain-horror-fear. It’s been long enough that sometimes he has trouble distinguishing this round of Hydra’s horrors from the lingering nightmares of Azzano, that sometimes in the depths of his agony he begins to think he might have dreamt up everything. Maybe he never got off that godforsaken table; maybe he was so desperate that he hallucinated his own rescue, hallucinated his own heroics at Steve’s side, hallucinated the fire and the missions and the train and the fall. 

Maybe it really has been three weeks. Or maybe it’s only been two days, or two whole months. It doesn’t really matter; he’s not going to believe them. If he believes them about this, then he has no defense against everything else they tell him, and he knows he can’t believe that. He _can’t_. They keep telling him Steve’s not coming, that Steve’s abandoned him or forgotten him or left him behind, that Steve’s dead—the stories change every time, but the ending is always the same (he’s always alone)—and he knows if he starts believing that, he’s good as dead.

So he closes his eyes and spits in their faces instead. He grits his teeth and reminds himself that Steve found him last time, and he didn’t even know Bucky was missing back then. Steve saw him disappear this time. He has to be on his way to rescue him. It feels wrong, relying on Steve to save him while he’s so terrifyingly helpless, but it’s the only thing he has left to hold onto when the past and the present blur together. He chases his own doubts away, forcefully reminds himself that if he were to hallucinate being rescued by Stevie, it wouldn’t have featured the 6-foot wall of muscle that still feels weird to him.

Steve is coming. Steve is coming. _Steve is coming_. He just needs to hold on until then.

* * *

They tell him it’s been four months.

He still doesn’t know how long it’s _really_ been, and he still refuses to believe them, but it gets harder by day. All he knows is that it’s been long enough that he sometimes can’t remember what Falsworth’s voice sounds like, or how Dernier’s favourite wine tastes, or what Jones’s girl’s name is. It’s been long enough for them to take what was left of his bloody arm and put some metal monstrosity there instead. (He thinks it might have been fascinating, the way the plates move and respond to his thoughts like his own skin and flesh, but given the situation he only feels sick every time he looks at it.) It’s been long enough that he’s started to recognize the labcoats that mill about.

It’s been long enough that the taste of blood clouds the memory of the taste of Steve’s lips. That the blue of Steve’s eyes stops looking like the summer sky and starts reminding him of that god damned electricity. That the touch of Steve’s hands on his skin blurs with the forceful press of uncaring doctors and scientists.

There’s a sick sort of familiarity to the routine now. They’ll tell him to comply, and they’ll beat him some when he refuses, and threaten to keep hurting him until he does. Sometimes they’ll burn him, or shove a couple dozen needles in his body, or whip him till he passes out, or break a few bones, or slice his skin to pieces with a blade—but there’s only so many ways to hurt a human body without killing it, and he thinks both he and they are intimately familiar with all of them now.

Sometimes they try again to convince him Steve’s not coming. Sometimes they still try telling him that Steve’s given up on him, that he never really cared, that he has more important things than Bucky now that he’s Captain America.

He still refuses to believe them, but it gets harder by day. 

* * *

Steve’s not coming.

Steve’s not coming, because he’s _gone_. He’s _dead_. They show him the newspapers, even bring in a radio so he can hear the president make some fancy statement about it. He’s not sure what the guy says, because he stops listening after _I am grieved to announce that Captain America was killed in action_. A scream is ringing in his ears before the sentence is finished, and it takes him long seconds to realize that it’s his. That it’s his voice, sounding like a dying man. He didn’t scream when they stuck him full of needles, when they woke him up with a metal contraption in place of his arm, but he’s screaming now.

By the time they strap him down again on that infernal machine—the one that crackles like thunder and pulses a bright blinding blue—he’s too worn from screaming and crying to fight. He realizes with a flutter of weak surprise that, for the first time, he doesn’t _want_ to resist. They croon in his ears, tell him they can make it stop hurting to breathe, to think, to _live_. He knows they’re probably still lying, but it’s been _so long_ , and Steve’s _dead_ and _gone_ and _never coming_ , and what does it matter anyway?

Bucky Barnes closes his eyes, lets go of hope, and believes them.

* * *

Someone was supposed to be coming. Someone was supposed to help him—someone with hair the colour of bullet casings scattering from his rifle, with wide eyes the colour of electricity burning in his brain. Someone with bloodied lips and torn knuckles, with fragile lungs and muscled arms. Someone was supposed to rescue him, but someone isn’t coming, and he feels a shiver of betrayal and anger run down his spine before it fades into irrelevance. 

Besides, what does the Asset need rescuing from? They—his handlers, his commanders, his masters—tell him he’s a fine-tuned weapon, a miracle of warfare, designed and trained to perfection. They tell him it’s his purpose to bring order to the world by obeying their orders. Once, when he mutters his secrets in a post-wipe delirium, they tell him he doesn’t need rescuing because he is where he belongs.

The Asset believes them. It never occurs to him that another option exists.

* * *

There is a man on a bridge with hair the colour of bullets and wide eyes the colour of electricity. There is a man on a bridge who calls him something he’s never heard but feels reverberating in his bones, whose face he’s never seen but his eyes crave like a weary traveller for home—and he knows. He doesn’t know what he knows, or how, or why, but he _knows_ , and he knows that it’s important. He knows that the man on the bridge was always coming for him. He knows that, for the first time, there is something the inferno of pain in his head didn’t take away. (He doesn’t know how he knows that either, doesn’t remember anything from past wipes, but this knowledge pales in comparison to the other.)

The Asset fights the man on the bridge, because those are his orders. He punches and kicks the man on the bridge, hits him with his own shield, shoots him three times. The man on the bridge comes down to help pry him out from under a beam on the crashing hellicarrier. The Asset fights him, still, because those are his orders. The man on the bridge does not fight. The man on the bridge calls him _Bucky_ , tells him his name is James Buchanan Barnes. The man on the bridge tells him the Asset is his friend, and promises the end of the line. The man on the bridge falls.

The Asset closes his eyes, lets go of the bar, and believes him.


End file.
